Review of Chainsaw Man
The Anime really excells at certain parts of its story, which is really refreshing, the World Building and the shocking imagery are really it's strong points, but sadly on terms of characters and certain points of consistency it lacks the quality it needed to live up to its hype. Starting with maybe it's best element, the World Building is clearly exeptional even considering that there are a lot of stories with very similar elements. The rules and laws of the world are clearly set down at the start and they have been adhered to throughout. This i not limited to only the rules but the character'ssituation, place in the world and chances as well.
The Plot is straight forward with clear and easy goals, which is one the most well-known fact about this anime. That does not just make it unique, but memorable and empathetic as well. The clear and easy plot also leaves place for the World Building and Characters to shine even brighter.
Sadly, on the Characters front the anime does not excells that notably. While all characters have all their basic elements, they do not emerge in any way, we could even call most of them basic. This takes a toll on imersion as well, as most characters aren't even approachable because of this from the audience's standpoint.
On top of that there are certain flaws with the anime as well, a lot could be amended in the second season and most of them are barely outstanding from nitpick category, but they are still lowering the potential enjoyment, and even the objective score.
Minor Spoilers from now on:
- We meet a type of species in a random mission for the first time, then after the mission ends, we get introduced to a new character of the same species we got just introduced to.
- Characters either directly contradict themselves or their said motivation, without anyone acknowledging it.
- Certain characters are said to be human, but have superspeed and strength, the first exceeding the speed of sound.
There are a lot of editing errors, but as they are mostly nitpicks as they did not affect the overall story in any major way, I'll just leave at mentioning the fact.
On the somewhat subjective style, I hated the artstyle, the contrasts were really weird for my eyes, and that half 3D was just uncanny valley for me. The worst part was when the background, foreground and character were all on different layers, but they weren't synced so they did not track properly. For me the most noticeable was at Ep8 2:19-, but friends complained that it was even worst in certain fightscenes.
On the subjective positive side, the anime did surprise me, with one thing. [Major Spoiler Warning]
At ep8 I knew that most major people were not dead, so I was somewhat distanced from the whole fight scene as I knew that most won't have drastic consequences, but X's death dragged me from my complacency which was really refreshing.
The last time that happened to me was Danganronpa 1, where the character I thought to be a tutorial one turned out to be someone else. (Maybe I am just too stuck with a western media mindset, as after the fact I realized both have a somewhat same arc as they got character so they can die now.)